


Intricate Rituals

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Fluff, GaaLee Bingo 2020, Implied Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy - Freeform, Implied Nara Shikamaru/Temari - Freeform, M/M, Misunderstandings, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26814151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Gaara and Lee have been friends for years, but recently Gaara has been making Lee ... feel things. Things he can't quite name. There's only one solution: challenges. Lots of them.For GaaLee Bingo Card #5: Love Letters Found.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee
Comments: 23
Kudos: 173
Collections: GaaLee Bingo





	Intricate Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Barbara Kruger's [_Untitled (You Construct Intricate Rituals)_](https://collections.mfa.org/objects/35582). 
> 
> Shout-out to everyone who has participated in the Bingo so far! Please be sure to check out the other square fills on [@gaalee-bingo](https://gaalee-bingo.tumblr.com)!

Gaara covers his mouth with his hand when he laughs. 

It’s dark in the little restaurant, moreso around their booth tucked into the back corner. Going out to eat with a Kage has its benefits. One is the attentive waitstaff. Another is that you get the best, most private seat in the house. 

Their booth is small and cozy, the bench seats just wide enough on each side for a single body. Overhead, the lamps’ bulbs are dimmed to a golden glow, made yet darker by their red paper shades. 

In the light, Gaara’s face is all soft curves and warmth. His bronze skin is lit up copper; the jade of his eyes flashes when he glances up at Lee from below his brow ridge. His hair, which has grown out a bit recently, falls across his forehead when he tips his face down in a stifled giggle, covering the burnished rouge of the scar on his forehead. 

He is, in a word, beautiful. 

Lee’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Oh,” he whispers to himself. “ _Oh_.” 

“Did you say something?” Gaara’s small hand leaves his mouth and the trace of a smile lingers behind on his lips, which are just damp from the little cup of sake he’s been ever-so-slowly nursing all evening. He reaches across the table and rests his hand atop Lee’s. 

Even his fingers are lovely, short and thin, his nails neatly trimmed and his skin uncalloused. They hardly look like shinobi’s hands at all, brown against the white of Lee’s bandages. Gaara’s fingers usually have little rings of dirt under the nails from his cactus garden. He must have scrubbed them before their dinner. 

Lee thinks he might prefer Gaara’s hands when they’re dirty. Smelling of earth and replete with the evidence of his passions. 

Gaara is reserved, not prone to grand displays of emotion the way Lee is, but around his plants, he _glows_. Lee has never seen him so happy as he is in his greenhouse, puttering around with his watering can in his canvas apron and floppy hat. He’s never seen him so satisfied as when a new cultivar flourishes. Gaara doesn’t have access to those things when he’s visiting Konoha, obviously, but he often spends his free time at the Yamanaka flower shop with Ino and Sai, giving them pointers on their small selection of succulents. 

Right now, Gaara has on the same expression he wears when a long-dormant flower bud bursts into bloom. 

“Lee?” He tilts his head. “Is something wrong?” 

His eyes are so deep and so green that Lee gets lost in them for a moment before he catches himself staring. 

“No! I was just saying—” he chokes, lying badly. “I was saying ‘Oh, it’s getting late, isn’t it?’” 

He stares frantically around the restaurant, nearly drained of its patrons. It’s been over an hour since they finished the complimentary dessert the chef insisted on foisting upon them, a colorful tray of mochi buns which Gaara refused to touch and Lee consumed in their entirety. There are only a few couples lingering at the tables in the corner. One man is kissing the back of his date’s hand, making bedroom eyes at her as she blushes beneath her makeup. A single bored-looking waiter is leaned against the hostess stand. 

“I should—” Lee stammers. “I should escort you back to your hotel.” 

Gaara sits back in his seat. His hand drops to his lap. Lee misses his touch immediately, and if he were in the business of lying to himself, he’d say Gaara looks almost … disappointed. 

“Right,” Gaara says, so quietly it can hardly be heard over the muffled clamor of the kitchen staff packing away the evening’s supplies. “It is … getting late.” 

Lee doesn’t know what to do with the new knowledge his heart has just foisted unceremoniously upon him, so he jumps to his feet and holds out his arm. 

Gaara stands and, after a moment, takes it. 

His small hand is very warm in the crook of Lee’s elbow, even against the balm of the summer evening. 

Lee might stand just a hair too close as they make their way back to the newly built inn on the outskirts of town, the one with the onsen out back that they’ve been housing all the dignitaries in lately. 

He bids Gaara goodnight at the door, and for just a moment, he thinks Gaara might be waiting for something. Gaara leans in, his hand resting on Lee’s forearm. His gaze is jumping from one of Lee’s eyes to the other, searching. 

“Your breath smells like sake,” Lee whispers. 

Gaara’s eyes widen. He draws a sharp breath. “Sorry.” 

“What time are you leaving tomorrow morning?” Lee asks. 

Gaara rocks back onto his heels. His hand snaps from Lee’s arm and wraps around his chest, so his arms are crossed in that all-too-familiar gesture. 

“Five AM,” he says. “Sharp.”

“I’ll be here to walk you to the gate.”

“See that you do,” Gaara replies, suddenly all rigid formality. He’s closed-off, as if a shield has fallen down over the Gaara-kun who holds Lee’s arm and giggles into his sake glass, and now Lee is speaking to the Kazekage of Sunagakure. 

Lee folds into a bow. 

Gaara does not even nod before he spins on his heel, the long hem of his coat flapping as he walks away.

* * *

Back in his own small apartment, Lee stews. 

He lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling, and he thinks of Gaara’s face in the dim light, the soft smudges of the dark circles around his eyes and how he longed to rub his thumb against them, as if he could wipe them away. He hears Gaara’s smoky voice whispering his name, pictures the shape of his sake-damp lips as he murmurs it, close and intimate. He thinks about Gaara’s small, thin hands and their precise little movements on his chopsticks to lift tiny bites of food to his mouth, on his napkin to dab away a spot of water Lee spilled, on Lee’s forearm to pick at the ridges of his bandages. 

His hand drifts down his chest. His heart beats so loudly it drowns out the ruckus of Kaizawa-san’s daughter’s tantrum from downstairs. 

The walls and floorboards of the apartment building are very thin. Lee has to leave his weights in a special safe downstairs before he’s even allowed to ascend the stairs to his third-floor walk-up. 

Such close, precarious quarters necessitate certain … considerations.

There’s a reason Lee normally trains away his desires. Anything else might be overheard. 

But he thinks about Gaara, his arms wrapped around his thin body like he needs that extra layer of protection, thinks about him turning and walking away, and his chest fills up with such an emptiness that it ends with a physical ache. The yearning is so massive that it stretches at his ribs, tugs at his breastbone. The lights are off, but he imagines if he looked down right now he would see the hollow his want has left inside him, his chest cracked wide open and nothing inside. 

He doesn’t know the name of this feeling inside him, but he knows that it’s _big_ , and he knows that it has something—everything—to do with Gaara. Beautiful, powerful Gaara, who picks up his food with both hands to eat it and smiles with his lips closed as if it would conceal his tanuki-sharp canines. Gaara, whose small hand always seems to find its way to the crook of Lee’s elbow when they’re standing close and talking, or walking side-by-side. Whose eyes, sometimes, remind Lee of those crystalline pits in Wave Country, their walls studded with algae and salt crystals that turn the water teal-green, holes just wide enough to swallow a man, so deep that they say if you fall into one you’ll never touch bottom before you drown. 

Lee tugs a pillow to his chest and wraps his arms around it, an imitation of the embrace he can’t have. Pulling his knees to his chest, he rolls over onto his side and curls up. 

He stares at the open window. He’s forgotten to close the curtains. 

The moon is high and bright and it punctures the sky like a hole punched through a skull by a spear. 

He shuts his eyes tight. 

Only a disgrace of a shinobi would fail to act in the face of such a challenge. 

And that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? A challenge. Something to attack with the full force of his skills and passions. 

Of course, there’s only one person Lee ever turns to when he encounters a novel challenge. 

He springs from the bed as if electrocuted and dashes to the stack of pocket-sized notebooks on his bookshelf. 

If he remembers correctly, Gai-sensei’s advice on courtship and relationships should be somewhere around notebook number 45.

* * *

“A challenge, eh?” Gai-sensei’s calloused hands slap hard against the pavement with every grunt of effort, his cast bobbing as he steps forward on his hands.

They’re only on their fifty-third lap of the village, passing Gai’s wheelchair back and forth between them with their feet as they stroll in handstand. It must be a bad pain day, for Gai to sound so fatigued after so few laps. 

With a little _hup!_ Gai chucks the wheelchair at Lee. Lee extends his foot to catch it on the sole, bouncing it in the air a few times and spinning it.

“Yes, Gai-sensei! But it’s a challenge I have yet to face, which is why I need your advice.”

“Well, don’t just stand there, tell me what the problem is! The best solutions are often those tackled head-on.” 

“There is someone I … admire deeply. And I would like to initiate a new phase of our relationship.” Lee’s face heats, and he can’t be sure that it’s not just the blood rushing to his head. “... Like what you have with Kakashi-sensei.”

“Ah!” Gai exclaims. “You want a passionate, burning-hot rivalry!”

“A ... rivalry?” Is that what it is?

Gai doesn’t respond, already barreling on, “Not to worry Lee, I’ve been Kakashi’s rival for over thirty years, and I’d say I know a thing or two about it. In fact, you might even call me an expert at it. I’ll teach you everything I know!”

Lee bursts into tears. “Thank you, Gai-sensei!”

The wheelchair tumbles off his foot and hits the paving stones with a clatter, wheels spinning wildly.

* * *

“Gaara-kun!” Lee shouts, standing at the AN gates as the Kazekage’s delegation approaches. “I challenge you to a race around the village! Whoever makes it back to the gate fastest wins!”

Gaara tilts his chin up. The green accents of his robes only intensify the bright jade of his eyes, glowing from beneath his hat’s shadow.

“No.” 

“No?” Lee yelps. “What do you mean, ‘no’?” 

“Obviously you can run faster than me, Lee. What would even be the point?” 

“The point is—” Lee falters. “The point is—!”

Gaara leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“The point is?”

“Victory!” Lee cries. “To attempt to best one another in passionate competition!” 

Gaara blinks once, slowly. There’s something vaguely reptilian about him when he does this, like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. “What do I get if I win?” 

Lee chokes. “It—It is not meant to be that sort of victory! The objective of the challenges is simply to see who wins the point! Then we can begin our running tally! Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei have been deadlocked at 50 points to 49 for years!” 

“I see.” 

Gaara glances over his shoulder at his ANBU guards, who are starting to look a little shifty and irritable. At least, as far as Lee can tell. Suna’s ANBU don’t wear animal-shaped masks the way Konoha’s do, but rather thick, anonymizing veils. Either way, the effect is the same—their expressions can’t be discerned. But Lee is pretty sure one of them just checked their watch. After a moment of what may be a brief chakra conversation that Lee’s senses are too untrained to detect, or which may just be a staring contest, Gaara shoos the ANBU on into the village. Their bodies flicker and then vanish. 

Gaara turns his attention back to Lee. “Can the point be exchanged for anything?”

Gaara’s neck is slightly damp, Lee notes, shiny along the bit of his throat between his chin and high-collared robes. He’s been sweating; he never could tolerate the humidity of a Konoha summer. 

“It’s not money, Gaara-kun.” Lee frowns. “The point is merely symbolic. Although … ” 

Suddenly, an idea dawns on him. He slams a fist against his chest. 

“I know! Whoever takes the point can choose our next challenge!” 

“Ah.” Gaara moves a little closer. Bits of his grown-out hair are stuck to his pink ears from his sweat. He smells like salt. “In that case, no.” 

“What?” It comes out as a screech. “But—but you just said—! Are you really—? You’re forfeiting?” 

Gaara shrugs. “Call it what you like. It’s a foregone conclusion. You’ll win. Take the point, and pick something else for next time.”

“Next time,” Lee breathes.

Gai-sensei’s words echo in Lee’s ears: _”When Kakashi became Hokage, we celebrated with a bouquet of flowers and a race across the village!”_

Gaara has been Kazekage since long before Lee decided he wanted to pursue this new twist in the roadmap of their relationship, but the premise is basically the same. If there will be no race today, Lee can at least pick up the other half of the bargain. 

“Then … here!” He thrusts out the arm he’s had clutched behind his back. 

Gaara just stares at the fistful of daffodils for a long, long moment. One small hand sneaks out from the voluminous sleeves of his Kage robe and takes them from Lee’s clenched grip. 

A light flush rises to Gaara’s face. The heat must really be getting to him. Lee should let him go on and rest; there’s no doubt he’s had a long journey. 

He brings the blossoms to his nose and inhales deeply. When he drops his hands once more, there’s a gentle wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, the hint of a smile that doesn’t quite extend to the corners of his mouth. Yellow pollen covers the bridge of his nose like freckles. 

“My meeting ends at four,” Gaara says. “I hope to see you then.” 

Lee’s heart pounds so hard and so loudly against his ribs that he’s certain Gaara must be able to hear it. 

“Of—of course!”

* * *

“Gaara-kun!” Lee races up to Gaara just as he’s leaving the Kazekage tower. 

It’s a hot midday in Suna, and Lee is still sweaty from the laps he’s been running around the village’s main square since his mission ended early. Gaara’s schedule is rather irregular, but Lee hoped that if he zipped past the tower’s front door enough times, he might catch him departing. Or Gaara’s ANBU would assume he was doing reconnaissance for an invasion. Fortunately the former transpired prior to the latter. 

Gai-sensei’s words have been resounding in his mind once more: _”A drinking contest is a traditional method of testing your mettle against your rival! Of course for you, Lee, that would not be safe. But an eating contest is just as good, if not better! There’s nothing quite like sharing a meal with a comrade to forge an unbreakable bond!”_

“I challenge you to a samosa-eating contest! Whoever eats the most wins!” 

Gaara’s eyes flick to the chuunin guarding the tower door. The chuunin very conspicuously looks away, beginning to falsely whistle a little tune.

“I like samosas,” Gaara says. “If that’s what you want for lunch, I know a stand in the market that makes excellent samosas.”

Lee punches the air. “Then the challenge is on!” 

Gaara eats only three samosas. He takes slow, delicate bites of each one, and then pats the grease off his lips with a paper napkin. After that, he just stands back with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Lee as he demolishes a tower of twenty-eight, much to the wide-eyed astonishment of the vendor. 

“That’s your victory,” Gaara says, a little smile playing at the corner of his lips as Lee groans and rubs his stomach.

“You didn’t even try!” Lee wails. 

Gaara just hums. “Two points to you.” He watches Lee the entire time he’s settling up the tab. “I look forward to seeing what you come up with for our next challenge.”

* * *

Their score is now six to zero, and at times Lee wonders if Gaara even considers this a rivalry at all. If he’s even _trying_. During their tea-drinking contest, Gaara just sipped sedately from his cup as Lee tried to swallow a potful of boiling water. He only stared at Lee’s hand with a look of faint confusion when Lee extended it for _jan-ken-pon_ , the sand in his gourd eventually batting Lee’s fist aside so Gaara could step closer. And last week’s arm-wrestling competition was little more than an exercise in bewilderment. Gaara put up not the slightest resistance to Lee bearing his knuckles down to the tabletop, but when Lee went to pull his hand away, Gaara twined their fingers together and _squeezed_.

Lee’s starting to wonder if just confronting Gaara head-on every time they happen to be in the same village is even working. 

Hence his newest endeavor, courtesy of Gai-sensei’s endless wisdom:

_”A heartfelt letter of challenge! In fact, Kakashi still has the first one of mine that he didn’t burn!”_

_“He … burnt them?”_

_“Ah, Kakashi has always been a quick one with a fire jutsu! Of course, at that age my handwriting was atrocious, so I mistakenly wrote his name as_ Kakatsu _!”_

“Lee.” Gaara’s soft rasp carries up the hallway as Lee scurries away from his office door. “What are you doing here?” 

Lee pales. He’s not meant to be up here—on the top levels of the Kazekage Tower—without a formal invitation, not at his security clearance. 

“I was just going to my office.” Gaara beckons him with one hand. “Come in.” 

Well, technically that counts as a formal invitation, doesn’t it?

Lee toes the door quietly shut behind them as Gaara crosses to his desk. Gaara looks down at the desk’s surface, then he pauses. His fingertips hover over the corner of the envelope emblazoned with his name in bold, heavy-handed kanji. Lee went through three calligraphy brushes getting the strokes just right, and there’s still a little sore on his tongue where he nearly bit through it in his concentration. 

“How did this get in here?” Gaara murmurs. 

Lee may not be able to focus chakra in the soles of his feet very well, but he can scale even the round walls of Suna’s buildings when he builds up sufficient speed, and—

Gaara’s eyes flick up to him. “Where are your legwarmers?” 

—he can move faster than human sight with his weights off.

“Um, just doing a little speed training!” Lee rubs the back of his neck. Technically it’s true. “Say, what’s that?” He gestures at the letter, feigning casualness. 

Gaara holds the envelope up to the light of the window, squinting. He tears it open with a thumb, scans it briefly, and sighs. “Another one?” 

He opens his desk drawer, and Lee catches a glimpse of many more nearly identical letters, piles of pink and red and white envelopes. Gaara sweeps Lee’s challenge letter in atop the rest of them and shuts the drawer with a waft of mixed perfume.

Gaara sighs. “That one, I couldn’t even tell if whoever wrote it wanted to fight me or fuck me.” 

Lee’s heart sinks. Of course, as Kazekage, Gaara must have a great many admirers. A great many people who would see him as a great and noble rival, an aspiration to meet or surpass. Certainly there are many more shinobi out there for whom Gaara’s presence causes heart palpitations just as severe as Lee’s. He shouldn’t have assumed Gaara would know the unsigned letter was from him, and now that he’s been so horribly misunderstood (not to mention the wholly illegal method of its delivery), he can’t possibly _admit_ he was the one who left it. 

“I’m certain—” He balks. “I’m certain the man who wrote that letter—”

“Man?” Gaara arches an eyebrow. The little red hairs there are so sparse that the expression appears more as a shadow of his brow ridge. “You know who sent it?”

“The—the _person_ who wrote that letter—!” Heat crawls stickily up the back of Lee’s neck. “I’m certain he— _they_ did not mean anything nearly so crude!”

“You’d be surprised.” Gaara rounds his desk and comes to lean against the front of it, mere inches from where Lee is standing and sweating profusely. “Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you. How much longer are you in the village?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” Lee tells him. “Bright and early!”

“Do you have plans for the evening?” Gaara’s hand has trailed up Lee’s bandages, as is its custom, and his square little fingernails are picking at the weaving on the inside of Lee’s elbow. It’s terribly distracting. 

“N-no,” Lee stammers, trying not to look at the little bits of dirt caked in Gaara’s nails. He must have been in his greenhouse on his lunch break. Lee wonders if he remembered to eat, or if he spent the whole time tending that ailing batch of _echeveria_ whose soil got saturated when an irrigation pipe burst. His trouble with it was the only thing he mentioned when Lee asked after his wellbeing, as he was handing off Lee’s mission scroll. “My mission objective was completed ahead of schedule, so I was just going to get an early night’s sleep.” 

“Come to my home, then,” Gaara says. “Around six. I’ll make dinner.”

* * *

“You know how to make curry?” Lee asks, peering over Gaara’s shoulder to look down into the simmering pot on the stove. 

Gaara hums. If he’s annoyed by Lee’s hand at the small of his back, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he leans back into Lee’s touch. There was a time when Gaara’s sand would not permit even a casual clap of Lee’s hand on his shoulder; the acceptance of Lee’s proximity has been hard-won. Lee’s heart thrills. 

“It’s a new skill. I’m still not very good at it. But your friend—Karashi? From the Curry of Life shop. You mentioned how excellent his curry was. I wrote to him some time ago, and he was kind enough to send me the recipe for a few of his simpler dishes.”

Lee cranes his neck forward and inhales deeply. The spice nearly burns his nostril hairs. It smells _delicious_.

“I had no idea you liked curry!” 

“I don’t.” Gaara glances at him over his shoulder. Lee realizes with a pang how close their faces are. “But you do.” 

The table in the dining room of the Kazekage Manor is obscenely large, more a banquet table than anything designed for friends—rivals!—to share a meal. So instead they eat standing up, leaning side-by-side against the stone counters while Gaara’s sand handles the clean-up. 

It might be the best curry Lee’s ever tasted. Sure, the flavor profiles aren’t quite as subtle as Madam Sansho’s, and the heat is a little mild for his tastes, but … Gaara made it for him. Gaara _learned_ how to make it for him.

“This is delicious!” Lee smacks his lips with panache. “What sort of meat is this?”

There’s a fine sheen of sweat beading up along Gaara’s hairline. “Hhh.” He stifles a cough into his fist. “It’s goat.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever had goat, but it might be my new favorite meat!”

“I prefer salted beef tongue,” Gaara says, setting his spoon down in his bowl with a clatter. His lips are nearly as red as his hair from the spice. “I’ll make that for you next time.”

“I look forward to it!” Lee beams. “Now, let’s see who can wash the dishes the fastest!”

* * *

“That one, there!” Lee thrusts a finger at the sky. “It looks like that monitor lizard we saw out by the Salt Mesa. The one with the circles around his eyes like Bisuke.” 

“Its tail is too long to be a monitor.”

Their latest challenge is cloud-watching on a grassy hill in Konoha, with the victor being whoever finds the most shapes in the clouds. 

Gaara has yet to identify a single shape, and so far has only critiqued Lee’s nominations. 

Shikamaru is the one who suggested it, after Lee ran dry of Gai-sensei’s challenge ideas. (There are only so many ways a man can explain _jan-ken-pon_ to someone who seems determined not to comprehend it.) Although Shikamaru didn’t fully seem to understand the thrust of Lee’s question. 

_”I took Temari cloud-watching on our first date. She seemed to like it. It’s good quality time, or whatever.”_

Regardless of what Shikamaru insisted on calling it, Lee feels he was able to shape the idea into a suitable challenge. Lee has discovered that Gaara doesn’t enjoy competitions that are loud or sweaty nearly as much as their more subdued counterparts. And that’s fine. Lee can be still and quiet, if it’s for Gaara.

Well, sort of.

He _is_ still doing sit-ups, Gaara kneeling on his feet to keep them in place. It’s just that he can’t focus if his body isn’t moving. Besides, the position gives him a good vantage point on the sky, and the little glimpses of Gaara’s face, with his head tipped back to look at the clouds and the slim column of his neck exposed, are a lovely reward for each completed crunch. 

Gaara’s weight is heavy on his feet, but not unpleasantly so. It’s just grounding. A reminder of Gaara and his warm body and his there-ness. 

“You know,” Lee comments off-hand, “if you’re not going to put any effort into winning the challenges, it makes the rivalry feel a little one-sided! I don’t think Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei ever had such a gap in their scores, even before they moved in together!” There’s no real heat in it. Not anymore. Lee is considered unusual by many, just as Gaara is. There’s no harm in their rivalry, too, being an unconventional one. Even if Lee is now ahead ten to none. 

Suddenly, Gaara’s hands clamp hard on Lee’s knees. Lee freezes mid-crunch. Gaara’s gaze is piercing. 

“You’ve been trying to _court_ me.” 

Everything goes blurry static in Lee’s head, like the pins-and-needles feeling he gets in his shins when he’s been sitting seiza for too long. 

His voice comes out strangled when he says, “I have?” 

Gaara’s fingers tighten on his kneecaps. There’s the little bite of nails, even through the fabric of Lee’s suit. 

“I thought I was just taking advantage of your misguided understanding of rivalry, but … The Hokage and your teacher—” Gaara takes a sharp breath. “I didn’t realize until you’d already left and I saw your handwriting on the mission report. You’re the one who wrote me that letter. I only just put it together.”

Understanding dawns on Lee slowly, like water being poured from a jug. First a few drops, and then a deluge that threatens to drown him. A name for his innominate feeling bobs to the surface. 

“I—You—What?” Lee squawks. 

“I want those things too.” Gaara’s fingers aren’t digging into Lee’s skin anymore. His thumbs are making small, precise circles on the insides of Lee’s knees. “The things you wrote about.”

“What … _things?_ ” Lee breathes. He scarcely remembers now the contents of the letter. He meant it from the bottom of his heart—of course he did—but much of the vocabulary was cribbed from Gai-sensei’s most inspiring speeches on youth and rivalry and battle-forged bonds. 

Gaara cocks his head. “Blood,” he says shortly. “Heat. Passion.” 

Lee is pretty sure he’s forgotten how to breathe. His abdominal muscles are protesting at being held in the same position for so long. 

Gaara reaches out and fists a hand in the front of his vest. 

Lee completes his sit up, and Gaara pulls him the rest of the way forward to kiss him. 

It’s dizzying. Lee’s heartbeat is in his mouth as Gaara’s lips press to his. His lips are so much softer than Lee imagined. Not that he imagined ever kissing Gaara, but if he did, he would have thought his lips would be rough from the constant donning and shedding of his sand armor. 

They’re not, though. They’re smooth and—when Gaara parts his lips on a sigh into Lee’s slightly gaping mouth—warm and wet. 

Lee’s knees are open, Gaara still crouched on his feet. It’s an awkward position, but Lee has trained his whole life for the ability to remain in far more punishing positions for far longer than this. He’ll gladly stay right here for as long as Gaara wants him. For as long as that small fist twisting in the front of his clothes holds him there. 

Which won’t be long, apparently, because Gaara’s moving closer, pushing him back to the ground. The hand that was still on Lee’s knee slides up his thigh with a frisson of warm friction. Gaara’s thin upper body wedges between Lee’s legs, making space for himself against Lee’s torso as he leans yet nearer, until he’s practically on top of Lee. 

He breaks off the kiss to pant against Lee’s chin. His breath smells like nothing but heat and spit. 

“Are you okay?” Lee whispers. 

Gaara’s eyes are open, but he’s not quite looking at Lee. His stare is fixed somewhere a thousand yards distant. Lee is acutely aware of Gaara’s erection prodding the crotch of his jumpsuit. 

“Overwhelmed,” Gaara grunts, after a moment. 

Lee scrambles to sit up immediately, putting some distance between the two of them. 

“We can take things slow! We don’t have to do everything at once!” 

Gaara blinks at him twice. In truth, that monitor lizard they saw looked more like Gaara than Bisuke, but Lee thought it rude to say so. The comparison springs to mind now. 

Gaara’s fingers unclench, and one hand reaches blindly for Lee’s wrist, nails scraping at Lee’s bandages. 

“Slow,” he says, and his gaze finally finds Lee’s face. His eyes are the size of dinner plates. The pulse in his throat is fluttering visibly. He licks his lips. “Yes.”

* * *

‘Taking it slow’ only lasts the duration of a single moonlit walk out in the desert with Gaara’s warm body pressed alongside Lee’s arm.

Gaara’s fingers have found their way into the fastenings of Lee’s bandages once more, and they’re bolder tonight, bold as the moon beating down on them from overhead, its rays streaking through Suna’s clear night sky like a paler sun. Gaara’s cold fingers work loose the knot at the crook of Lee’s elbow, and then slip beneath the fabric to touch the skin of Lee’s inner arm.

No one has touched Lee beneath his bandages in _years_. The last person to do so was a medi-nin whose name he doesn’t even remember, stitching him up at an outpost in the Stone Village after he snagged himself on tripwire and caught a line of kunai to the forearm. 

The skin there is very sensitive. 

Lee shudders, and Gaara strokes the thin, scarred skin yet more gently. 

Gaara’s smiling when Lee chances a glance at him, all crinkled eyes and no movement of his lips at all. The moon is reflected in his irises, the jade glow turned unearthly, silvery green. He leans in closer and noses aside the hair that falls over Lee’s ear to breathe there. His breath is loud as he kisses the space behind Lee’s ear, then laps his tongue in the place his lips just were, as if tasting Lee’s sweat. The motion is repeated until that hollow of skin, that junction of Lee’s goosebumped flesh and Gaara’s warm mouth, is slick-wet with the condensation of Gaara’s breathing, with the trails his lips and tongue are leaving. 

Lee isn’t sure when they stopped actually walking. His feet are like cactus roots in the sand, deep-reaching and desperate. It’s possible they’ve been standing beside this particular outcropping of stone for some time. 

Gaara is in front of him now, to take him by the shoulders and kiss him. He must be using his sand as a step-stool, because without it, he’s not tall enough to reach Lee’s face without Lee stooping down. 

Gaara sidles in a little closer, one hand slipping down Lee’s arm to trace shivery trails where his now-loose bandages are flapping away, blown by the desert wind. Even though the thickness of their reinforced, waxy cloaks, Gaara’s body burns _hot_. It’s a stark contrast to the chill of his fingers, as if just the core of him has stoked a fire, sapping away all the heat from his limbs. 

Lee wraps his arms around Gaara’s skinny frame and tugs him closer. 

There’s the rustle of sand shifting, a little gasp as Gaara stumbles. Lee catches him and hauls Gaara’s slight body into his arms with his hands under Gaara’s thighs. 

Gaara shifts against him as they keep kissing, Lee walking backwards until they’re up against the rock. He rolls his body against Lee’s, and then he _moans_. It’s the loudest thing in the quiet desert night, carrying over the distant cries of foxes and the whip of the wind. 

The noise Lee makes in response could best be described as a whimper, as Gaara plunders his mouth once more. His heart pounds so hard it might just beat right through his ribs and into Gaara’s chest. 

There’s a sort of rumbling noise coming from low in Gaara’s throat. It could almost be a purr. He nibbles Lee’s lower lip, chewing at him like he might work at an especially tough piece of meat. The writhing of his body only grows more frantic. 

“Are you feeling overwhelmed?” Lee speaks as best his can with his lower lip still between Gaara’s teeth. 

Gaara nods without breaking their kiss. “In a good way,” he mumbles into Lee’s mouth, with a smack of wet lips. 

“I thought we were taking things slow.” 

Gaara shivers, full-bodied, and Lee feels the tremor of his hips, the hardness there. 

“I changed my mind.” 

“Um,” Lee says, and Gaara leans back to regard him but does not attempt to make Lee set him down. His eyes flash in the moonlight. “Then, are you sure we should be … doing this out here? Instead of somewhere more private?” 

“No.” Gaara presses his lips to Lee’s again, locks their mouths tightly together. “Close your eyes,” he whispers into Lee’s mouth, “and don’t breathe.”

A moment later, a cyclone of sand spills them out into what must be Gaara’s bedroom, judging by the photos on the bookshelf and the trailing vines of succulents in the windowsill. 

Lee is still clutching Gaara close. 

Gaara leans back from their embrace—not enough to overbalance them, but enough that Lee has to flex to keep them upright—and eyes Lee keenly. 

“ _You_ don’t still want to take things slow, do you?” 

Lee shakes his head so rapidly his bangs flop over his face. “No! In fact, I think I’ve just decided on what our next challenge will be!”

Gaara lets Lee carry him to the bed.

And it turns out that Gaara covers his mouth with his hand when he does _other_ things, too.

**Author's Note:**

>  _shi_ and _tsu_ in Japanese katakana are almost identical characters, much to the chagrin of many Japanese language learners. Gai's mistake is a common one.


End file.
